


Can You Imagine

by WhatsYourNameMan



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bullying, James just want everyone to be happy, M/M, Thomas Jefferson Being an Asshole, Thomas doesn't know how to express his feelings, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9335948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatsYourNameMan/pseuds/WhatsYourNameMan
Summary: If a boy is mean to you, it means he likes you.Or, Thomas doesn't know how to talk to boys.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This one is based on this post from tumblr: https://justsmilingmoreandtalkingless.tumblr.com/post/155627593210/burrn-thisisgonnabesofucked-jefferson-has-a  
> It's also based on a fic I read on here that was called something along the lines of “Of Gold Tipped Canes and Mascara”. I wanted to link it but it’s been deleted since the last time I read it, sadly. So if the author happens to see this, I just want them to know that it’s still my all-time favorite jamilton fic.

“You know, you’re not going to win him over by insulting him all the time.”

James brought a bowl of macaroni over to the couch in his living room, where Thomas was curled up in a ball. Thomas always came over to James’s house after debate club, but today James hadn’t gone to school and Thomas had arrived at his door in tears.

“Come on, don’t cry,” James said, sitting down next to his friend. He tried to hand him the bowl, but Thomas wouldn’t take his face out of the pillow he was sobbing into. James sighed and put the bowl on the coffee table. “So what exactly happened?”

Thomas mumbled something into the pillow.

“I can’t hear you, Thomas.”

Thomas sat up, revealing just how much of a mess he was. His mascara was running and blood was streaming from his nose.

“Oh god, Thomas, my mom’s pillow,” James exclaimed, grabbing the pillow from his friend. He would have to wash it before his mom got home.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas muttered, wiping at his face, which only served to smear the makeup and blood together.

“It’s fine,” James said. “Now give me details.”

Thomas leaned his head on James’s shoulder.

“He punched me,” Thomas said, his voice shaking.

James sighed. Thomas had been antagonizing Hamilton for years. James knew it was because Thomas had a massive crush, but to Hamilton it seemed like Thomas hated him. Being friends with both of them, James had to listen to both of them talk about the other, but he was powerless to tell Hamilton that Thomas didn’t know how to express his feelings without being an asshole. He knew it was only a matter of time before Hamilton snapped, and of course it was on the one day he wasn’t there to stop it.

James ran his hand through Thomas’s curls, something he knew Thomas found very comforting. “Maybe if you tried actually talking to him…”

“I don’t know how,” Thomas wailed, turning his face into James’s shoulder. The smaller boy tried not to wince as Thomas’s mascara smeared onto his shirt. “And besides, he hates me. He told me so himself, in no uncertain terms.”

Thomas hiccuped as Hamilton’s earlier words resurfaced in his mind. They were so cruel. Thomas knew he deserved it, as he wasn’t kind himself, but Hamilton’s words had so much pure hatred in them.

He just wanted Alexander to like him.

James looked at his friend with pity. The poor boy was a wreck. James came to a decision.

“Go get cleaned up,” James said. “My sister’s makeup remover is in the top drawer under our bathroom sink and the washcloths are in the closet.”

Once Thomas had left the room, James picked up his phone and texted Hamilton.

_Hey can you come over? We need to talk._

Hamilton’s reply came only a few seconds later.

_Is Jefferson there?_

_No,_ James lied.

Ten minutes later, Hamilton was at James’s doorstep. Thomas was still in the bathroom, so James led Hamilton to the living room. Hamilton eyed the bowl of macaroni on the table suspiciously as he sat down, but he didn’t say anything.

“So what happened with you and Thomas?” James asked.

Hamilton studied the couch cushions. “He called me… Well, he called me a name that really wasn’t okay, and I kind of snapped. I just let go of all the anger I’ve had because of him and then… then I punched him.”

James could guess what the name was and made a mental note to admonish Thomas for that later. At the moment though, he only checked to make sure Thomas was still in the bathroom.

“Okay, look,” James said, as quickly as he could. “I know Thomas seems like a jerk, and he says things that he shouldn’t, but he’s really not like that. I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but the only reason Thomas acts like that around you is because he has a major crush on you, and he doesn’t know any other way to act.” James checked around him again and let out a sigh of relief when Thomas was nowhere to be found.

Hamilton was stunned. “He… What?”

“He’s like, in love with you dude.”

Thomas chose that moment to emerge from the bathroom, still wiping at his eyes with a towel. “Hey James, do you think I could borrow your sister’s mascara? I don’t like not wearing any makeup.”

“You have a crush on me?”

Thomas snapped his head up to see Hamilton sitting next to James. His gaze flickered between the two of them, his expression one of horror when on Hamilton and one of betrayal when on James.

“James, what the hell?” He finally asked.

Hamilton didn’t give James the chance to answer. He was already crossing the room so he could be face to face with Thomas.

“Answer the question,” Hamilton demanded. “Do you have a crush on me?”

“I-I… N-no!” Thomas stuttered, his cheeks burning. He didn’t know why he would say that. But how could he justify being such a jerk if Hamilton knew he liked him?

Hamilton scoffed. “Asshole.” He turned on his heels, glaring at James as he walked towards the door. “Thanks for nothing, James. I thought we were friends, but clearly, everyone just wants me to feel like shit about myself.”

“Alexander, wait,” James called, but Hamilton had already slammed the door shut.

Thomas burst into tears the second the door shut.

“Why would you do that?” Thomas asked in between sobs.

“Why would _you_ do _that_?” James demanded. “I gave you the perfect opportunity to tell him how you feel and you just convinced him even more that you hate him.”

“I would’ve told him when I was ready,” Thomas shouted. James highly doubted that, but he wasn’t given the chance to say so, because Thomas was already storming towards the door. “Now he’s never going to like me. Thanks a lot.”

Thomas slammed the door and James threw himself down on the couch with a groan. This was what he got for trying to help his friends.

A few minutes later, his mom walked through the door.

“James Madison!” she exclaimed. “What in the world did you do to that pillow?”

“I’ll take care of it,” James sighed.


	2. Chapter Two

James was going to end this. Neither Thomas nor Hamilton had talked to him or each other in over a week. James had approximately three friends, and he didn’t appreciate that two of them were ignoring his existence.

He had worked it all out with Mr. Washington, who had trusted James with a key to his office on the condition that James clean up any mess Hamilton and Thomas might make as they hashed things out. Knowing those two, Washington was expecting things to break. James had seen him leaving the school with a box full of his most valuable things.

Thomas arrived first. He didn’t seem happy to see James standing by the door of the office.

“I never would have agreed to come if Washington had told me you would be here,” Thomas said, looking at James with disdain. Madison didn’t respond. “Where is Washington anyways?”

James shrugged. “He said he’d be back in a few minutes.”

Thomas scoffed. “Well I’m waiting inside the office. Don’t follow.”

“Whatever,” James rolled his eyes, but inside he was celebrating. This was exactly how he had planned it.

Hamilton came a few minutes later.

“Where’s Washington?” He asked, making no attempt at greeting James.

James simply pointed inside the office. Hamilton walked inside, and as soon as he did, James slammed the door shut and locked it.

“Now talk,” he yelled through the door. “Call me when you’ve figured it all out. I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying.” And with that, he left the school.

Inside the office, both boys were swearing at the door, unaware that Madison was long out of earshot.

Eventually, they realized that James wasn’t coming back and moved to opposite corners, desperate to get as far away from each other as possible.

“That bastard,” Thomas muttered, still in disbelief. He never would’ve though James would pull something like this.

“Why do you have to use that word?” Hamilton asked.

Jefferson looked up at the smaller boy. He had his arms crossed defensively across his chest and he was staring intensely at a spot on the floor. He had a hurt look on his face, which surprised Thomas. He had been insulting James, not Hamilton.

“What word?” Thomas asked.

“You know what word I mean,” Hamilton spat. “The one you called me the other day.”

“What, a bastard? What’s so bad about that?”

Hamilton rolled his eyes and shifted his glare towards Thomas. “My parents weren’t married. I’m illegitimate and I don’t like being reminded of that fact.”

Thomas returned Hamilton’s glare, but on the inside he was dumbfounded. He had never made the connection between Hamilton’s past and the insult he threw around so casually. It made his heart hurt, but he couldn’t let Hamilton know that.

“Yeah, and?”

Hamilton’s jaw dropped. “ _Why_ are you so _mean_?” He started pacing the floor, still careful to keep his distance from Jefferson. “What did I ever do to you to justify this level of cruelty? Do you just take some sort of sick pleasure in seeing others in pain? Because that’s what you cause, Jefferson. For four years, you’ve done nothing but insult me and kill my self-esteem, but do you care? No. You just keep doing it. And then the other day, when Madison told me…what he told me, I dared to think that maybe, for a second, you had moved past filling every day of my life with meanness, but then it turned out to be some elaborate prank just to humiliate me. Ha, look at Hamilton, he was gullible enough to actually believe that someone actually liked him. And not just anyone, _Thomas Jefferson_ , the hottest, most popular guy in school. What a loser.”

Finished with his speech and still not believing he had actually said some of the things he said, Hamilton sunk to the floor. He pulled at his hair and let it fall in front of his face, trying to hide the tears that were falling.

Thomas felt tears coming to his eyes. After a few moments of internal struggle—it felt more like an eternity to him—Thomas made the decision to let down his facade. He sat down on the floor across from Hamilton.

“It wasn’t a prank,” he said quietly, fidgeting with a thread in Washington’s carpet.

“What?” Hamilton snapped.

“It wasn’t a prank,” Thomas repeated, “what happened at James’s house. James…he was just trying to help and I royally screwed it up. Look, Hami—Alexander,” Thomas looked around the office, anywhere but Hamilton’s eyes, trying to get up the nerve to say what he needed to say. “I really like you. I’ve had a crush on you since the day we met. I thought—I hoped—that it would pass, but four years later I still get the same butterflies every time I look at you. And I tried everything I could to crush those butterflies, because I knew that there was no way that someone as amazing as you would ever like someone like me. I tried to hate you, I really did. But I’ve never been able to escape those goddamn butterflies.”

“If you really like me as much as you say you do, then why are you so mean all the time?” Both boys were still avoiding eye contact.

Thomas bit his lip and felt tears start to slip out of his eyes. At the back of his mind he vaguely realized that his makeup was going to run again, but he hoped Hamilton would be able to ignore that and take what he was about to say seriously.

“My d…” Thomas’s voice faltered, which caught Hamilton’s attention. He raised his head up a little as Thomas took a shaky breath and started over. “My dad died when I was fourteen. At that point I had barely figured out that I liked guys, or anyone for that matter. I had never thought to ask my dad for dating advice, because I had never thought about dating. And then he died, and you moved here not too long after, and I realized that you were what I wanted, and I had no way of knowing how to talk to you. My sisters were always told that if a boy was mean to them, it meant he liked them. And that was what I tended to see when I looked at other guys flirting. I saw Adams picking on Abigail on the middle school playground, and Burr teasing Theodosia about her grades in earth science. So, I tried it. Needless to say, it didn’t work. By the time I realized that, I couldn’t come clean because I couldn’t justify being so mean if I liked you, so I pretended I didn’t. I pretended I hated you in hopes that maybe someday I would and I wouldn’t care so much about what you think about me. That it wouldn’t hurt so much that you hated me.”

Hamilton was now staring at Jefferson, who was looking at the ground, mascara running down his cheeks. Hamilton had never known about Thomas’s past.

“Jefferson…” he started. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Thomas winced and Hamilton realized his mistake.

“No no no no, I don’t mean your thing with your dad, or that I don’t believe you. I just meant… the whole ‘if a guy is mean to you it means he likes you’ thing. But you didn’t know any better.” Hamilton moved closer and put his hand on Jefferson’s arm. “I don’t hate you, Thomas.”

“You don’t?” Thomas sniffled. “But I’ve been so horrible to you. You have every right in the world to hate me.”

“It’s like you said,” Hamilton said with a small smile, “I wouldn’t care so much about your opinion if I hated you.”

“I’m so sorry,” Thomas said. “I’m sorry that I made your life hell. I should’ve just come clean from the start. At least then you could’ve rejected me and I could’ve moved on and neither of us would’ve had to go through so much pain.”

Hamilton was silent for a moment. “You know,” he said slowly, “I’m not sure I would have rejected you. Not at first. I mean, I’m a long way from forgiving you completely, but I’m sorry that I never tried to get to know you. That I never let my guard down enough to see past the outside.”

Thomas finally met Hamilton’s eyes. “I know what I’m telling you isn’t really okay. I know I don’t deserve forgiveness and I know I certainly don’t deserve you. But can we try to be friends? And maybe, one day, move past this?”

Hamilton nodded. “I’d like that. I want to be your friend. I really do. And maybe… maybe sometime in the future we can talk about something more.”

Thomas looked at Hamilton with gratitude in his eyes. “Thank you so much.”

Hamilton smiled and wiped at the streaks on Thomas’s cheeks. “You know, I didn’t know you wore mascara until last week. I always thought your eyes were just naturally pretty.”

Thomas blushed a deep red and choked out a breathy chuckle. “They’re not…I’m not pretty.”

“A lot of people would beg to differ,” Hamilton said gently. “Myself included.”

“You’re making this friends thing kind of hard,” Thomas chuckled.

Hamilton laughed. “Sorry. I’m just flirtatious by nature, I guess. And for the record, that’s how you talk to a boy you like.”

Thomas knitted his brows together. “Wait…”

Hamilton winked at him and stood up. “Maybe you could give it a try and the future could come a lot sooner. But for now, let’s call James and get out of here.”

“Yeah, okay,” Thomas said, fumbling for his phone.

As the dial tone rang, one thought went through Thomas’s mind: _Forgiveness. Can you imagine?_


	3. Epilogue

James was the best man.

That’s all that could be expected. After all without him, Alex and Thomas never would have gotten together in the first place.

He stood by Alex’s side as he waited at the alter. Alex was nervous, as usual, but for once it was a good type of nervous. He bounced anxiously as he waited for Thomas to walk down the aisle. He cast his eyes around at the crowd, taking in the faces of all his loved ones, eventually meeting James’s eyes. The smaller man gave Alex a reassuring smile and nodded his head toward the back of the room.

Alex looked up and saw Thomas entering the room. His breath left him. Thomas was wearing a tux matching Alex’s, with a purple rose and sensible mascara. He looked beautiful, as always.

Thomas, seeing Alex for the first time that day, was greeted with a familiar feeling. Those goddamn butterflies. Thomas was so glad that after so many years, he didn’t have to fight them any more. He beamed at Alex, who beamed right back.

When Thomas reached the end of the aisle, given away by Washington, Alex immediately took his hands.

“You look beautiful,” Alex whispered.

Thomas blushed and looked away, just as he had done all those years ago in Washington’s office. “No I don’t.”

Alex tilted his chin so he was looking at him. “Thomas Jefferson, you promised me that when the future finally came I would be allowed to tell you that you’re pretty and you would allow yourself to believe me. Well the future is here, and I have never seen you looking more beautiful.”

Thomas bit his lip as he felt tears come to his eyes. He silently thanked God that his mascara was waterproof.

“God, I love you,” Thomas whispered.

Alex rolled his eyes with a grin. “I should hope so. You are about to marry me, after all.”

Thomas was sure the service was beautiful, but he barely heard any of it. He spent the entire time gazing at Alex, the love of his life, getting lost in his eyes.

Look at those eyes, he thought.

In those eyes there was nothing but love for Thomas, something he never though would’ve been possible. He thought back to that day at James’s house, when Alex’s eyes were filled with pain and anger. Thomas hadn’t seen that look since the day they put their differences aside. He was so grateful that he was able to right his wrongs, and replace that hurt with happiness.

And as he stared at his light, his life, his entire world, one thought went through Thomas’s mind: _Forgiveness. Can you imagine?_


End file.
